Finally

[Ulvetanna_imp]

When my friends ask me about summer rides, they want to know what I saw. When my friends ask me about winter rides, they want to know how I felt. Ferret's pictures and Cormanus' comment about them remind me that I need to answer the summer question, even if they haven't asked it.

I ride in the cold because I want to experirence winter and because I experience it differently from my two-wheeled perch than in a 4-wheeled box or even on foot or skis. Like deserts and volcanoes, winter is beautiful in its starkness.

That is almost exactly how my buddy put it a while back.

I just don't ride in cold weather any more, I can't take it.
Your comments brought this to mind:

Nature has many tricks wherewith she convinces man of his finity, -- the ceaseless flow of the tides, the fury of the storm, the shock of the earthquake, the long roll of heaven's artillery, -- but the most tremendous, the most stupefying of all, is the passive phase of the White Silence. All movement ceases, the sky clears, the heavens are as brass; the slightest whisper seems sacrilege, and man becomes timid, affrighted at the sound of his own voice. Sole speck of life journeying across the ghostly wastes of a dead world, he trembles at his audacity, realizes that his is a maggot's life, nothing more. Strange thoughts arise unsummoned, and the mystery of all things strives for utterance. And the fear of death, of God, of the universe, comes over him, -- the hope of the Resurrection and the Life, the yearning for immortality, the vain striving of the imprisoned essence, -- it is then, if ever, man walks alone with God.

-Jack London, The White Silence, 1899